The most prominent of Russia's bodies of fresh water is Lake Baikal, the world's deepest and most capacious freshwater lake. Lake Baikal alone contains over one fifth of the world's liquid fresh surface water. Truly unique on Earth, Baikal is home to more than 1,700 species of plants and animals, two thirds of which can be found nowhere else in the world.

In Chechnya, there have been credible allegations of violations of international human rights and humanitarian law committed by Russian and pro-Moscow Chechen forces. Chechen rebels also have committed abuses as well as acts of terrorism. Human rights groups have criticized Russian officials concerning cases of Chechens disappearing while in custody. Chechen rebels have similarly been responsible for politically motivated disappearances. Russian authorities have introduced some improvements, including better access to complaint mechanisms, the formal opening of investigations in most cases, and the introduction of two decrees requiring the presence of civilian investigators and other nonmilitary personnel during all large-scale military operations and targeted search and seizure operations. Human rights groups welcome these changes but claim that most abuses remain uninvestigated and unpunished and may be spreading more broadly in the North Caucasus.

At the time of the first Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus, the state was under control of a group of princes who could not agree on anything.

The title of Tsar was first bestowed on Ivan IV, who would become known as Ivan the Terrible.

In the Soviet Union, only Russian SFSR lacked even the paltry instruments of statehood that the other republics possessed, such as its own republic-level Communist Party branch, trade union councils, Academy of Sciences, and the like. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was banned in Russia in 1991-1992, although no lustration has ever taken place, and many of its members became top Russian officials. However, as the Soviet government was still opposed to market reforms, the economic situation continued to deteriorate.

The World War II showed that the Soviet Union was a superpower worth taking note of.

Founded in the 12th century, the Principality of Muscovy, was able to emerge from over 200 years of Mongol domination (13th-15th centuries) and to gradually conquer and absorb surrounding principalities.

In the 1860s a movement known as Nihilism developed in Russia. For some time many Russian liberals had been dissatisfied by what they regarded as the empty discussions of the intelligentsia. The Nihilists questioned all old values and shocked the Russian establishment.